Richard Aitson (December 26, 1953- June 24, 2022) is a

Kiowa Kiowa () people are a Native American tribe and an indigenous people of the Great Plains of the United States. They migrated southward from western Montana into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in the 17th and 18th centuries,Pritzker 326 and eve ...

Kiowa Apache The Plains Apache are a small Southern Athabaskan group who live on the Southern Plains of North America, in close association with the linguistically unrelated Kiowa Tribe. Today, they are centered in Southwestern Oklahoma and Northern Texas and ...

bead artist, curator, and poet from

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

Background

Richard Aitson was born on December 26, 1953, in

Anadarko, Oklahoma Anadarko is a city in Caddo County, Oklahoma, United States. The city is fifty miles southwest of Oklahoma City. The population was 5,745 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Caddo County. History Anadarko got its name when its post off ...

.Velie, 297"Richard Aitson, 1953-"
''Native American Authors.'' (retrieved 10 Jan 2010) His mother was the Kiowa traditionalist Alecia Keahbone Gonzales (1926–2011), who taught the

Kiowa language Kiowa or Cáuijògà/Cáuijò:gyà ("language of the Cáuigù (Kiowa)") is a Tanoan language spoken by the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma in primarily Caddo, Kiowa, and Comanche counties. The Kiowa tribal center is located in Carnegie. Like most Nor ...

at the

University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma (USAO) is a public liberal arts college in Chickasha, Oklahoma. It is the only public college in Oklahoma with a strictly liberal arts–focused curriculum and is a member of the Council of Public ...

. Aitson's Kiowa name means "Buffalo Rider." His family has had many artistic accomplishments and he comes five generations of respected beadworkers."Richard Aitson."
''Legends Santa Fe.'' 2010 (retrieved 10 Jan 2010) Aitson attended the

Kimball Union Academy Kimball Union Academy is a private boarding school located in New Hampshire. Founded in 1813, it is the 22nd oldest boarding school in the United States. The academy's mission is to "create a deep sense of belonging for every member of our commu ...

Meriden, New Hampshire Meriden is an unincorporated community in the eastern part of the town of Plainfield in Sullivan County, New Hampshire, United States. Meriden is home to Kimball Union Academy, a private boarding school. New Hampshire Route 120 passes through t ...

;

Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...

Oberlin, Ohio Oberlin is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States, 31 miles southwest of Cleveland. Oberlin is the home of Oberlin College, a liberal arts college and music conservatory with approximately 3,000 students. The town is the birthplace of the ...

; and the

Institute of American Indian Arts The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed in the historic S ...

Santa Fe, New Mexico Santa Fe ( ; , Spanish for 'Holy Faith'; tew, Oghá P'o'oge, Tewa for 'white shell water place'; tiw, Hulp'ó'ona, label=Tiwa language, Northern Tiwa; nv, Yootó, Navajo for 'bead + water place') is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. ...

.Harjo and Little Thunder, 104 In 1976, Aitson produced documentaries for the

Bicentennial __NOTOC__ A bicentennial or bicentenary is the two-hundredth anniversary of a part, or the celebrations thereof. It may refer to: Europe *French Revolution bicentennial, commemorating the 200th anniversary of 14 July 1789 uprising, celebrated ...

Commission about Native American events. He worked at the Squash Blossom Gallery in

Aspen, Colorado Aspen is a home rule municipality that is the county seat and the most populous municipality of Pitkin County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 7,004 at the 2020 United States Census. Aspen is in a remote area of the Rocky Mounta ...

, in 1979, which is where he first curated art shows. He has since curated many group shows, including "Winter Camp 2000" at the

National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is a museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, with more than 28,000 Western and American Indian art works and artifacts. The facility also has the world's most extensive collection of Ame ...

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, a ...

. He taught Native American literature at Anadarko High School and also taught at

Bacone College Bacone College, formerly Bacone Indian University, is a private tribal college in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Founded in 1880 as the Indian University by missionary Almon C. Bacone, it was originally affiliated with the mission arm of what is now Ameri ...

as an Adjunct Professor of Art.

Beadwork

Aitson jumped into

beadwork Beadwork is the art or craft of attaching beads to one another by stringing them onto a thread or thin wire with a sewing or beading needle or sewing them to cloth. Beads are produced in a diverse range of materials, shapes, and sizes, and vary b ...

ing out of necessity. He was invited to join the prestigious Kiowa Gourd Clan and had to learn beading to create his

gourd dance The Gourd Dance is a social dance. Origin legends Many Native Americans dispute the origin of the legend of the Gourd Dance. A Kiowa story recounts the tale of a young man who had been separated from the rest of the tribe. Hungry and dehydrated ...

regalia. Aitson describes his art as "contemporary-traditional" and he creates beaded dance regalia for the Native American community as well as bead art for fine art collectors and museums. He is known in particular for his fully beaded, functional

cradleboard Cradleboards (, se, gietkka, sms, ǩiõtkâm, smn, kietkâm, sje, gietkam) are traditional protective baby-carriers used by many indigenous cultures in North America and throughout northern Scandinavia amongst the Sámi. There are a variety ...

s, but he also makes miniature cradleboards with extremely minute beads. "I am touched by the art of the World War years and the Reservation Era because in my opinion, that is when the finest Kiowa beadwork was produced," he writes. "Quality beads and supplies were extremely scarce, yet remarkable and ingenious beadwork that bridged the ancient and the future was quietly created."

Writing

Aitson writes poems inspired by traditional Kiowa oral history. His work, as Alan Velie writes, "combines the dream vision with animism to produce striking powerful imagery. He is inspired by Chilean poet

Pablo Neruda Ricardo Eliécer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto (12 July 1904 – 23 September 1973), better known by his pen name and, later, legal name Pablo Neruda (; ), was a Chilean poet-diplomat and politician who won the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature. Nerud ...

Exhibits and honors

In 1992, Aitson had a solo exhibition at the US Department of Interior's

Southern Plains Indian Museum Southern Plains Indian Museum is a Native American museum located in Anadarko, Oklahoma. It was opened in 1948 under a cooperative governing effort by the United States Department of the Interior and the Oklahoma state government. The museum feat ...

in Anadarko. His work has earned numerous awards, including the Red Earth Festival's Grand Award in 1997 and the

Southwest Museum The Southwest Museum of the American Indian is a museum, library, and archive located in the Mt. Washington neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, above the north-western bank of the Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County) canyon and stream. The muse ...

's Jackie Autry Purchase Prize in 2005."On the Wind."
''Native Peoples.'' January/February 2005 (retrieved 10 Jan 2010) Many examples of his work are part of the permanent collection at the Sequoyah National Research Center in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Notes

References

*Goins, Charles Robert and Danney Goble
''Historical Atlas of Oklahoma.''
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006. . *Harjo, Barbara and Julie Pearson Little Thunder
''Artistic Tastes: Favorite Recipes of Native American Artists.''
Santa Fe: Kiva Publishing, 1998. . *Johnson, Nancy and Norman F. Sheridan. ''Winter Camp 2000''. Oklahoma City: National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, 1999. . *Velie, Alan R
''American Indian Literature: An Anthology.''
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999. .

External links

Oral History Interview with Richard Aitson
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aitson, Richard Apache people Kiowa people Native American bead artists Native American painters Native American writers 1953 births Living people Artists from Oklahoma People from Anadarko, Oklahoma Institute of American Indian Arts alumni Bacone College faculty Oberlin College alumni